To continue the conversation and see how research librarians can work with you and your course, please feel free to contact us:
Rose Beranis, Wellness Librarian & Experiential Learning Coordinator
Susan Chatham, Research Librarian
Amy Harrell, Head of Collections, Research, & Instruction
Jeff Liszka, Humanities Librarian
or...
Learn more about instruction and activity options.
Request a research instruction workshop/activity.
Short Description:
In this course, students were assigned a 15-20 page research paper requiring them to write a cultural history of a primary source centered around a cultural artifact or place. The paper included discussion of the historical context surrounding their selected source and how the source relates to U.S. militarism in Asia or the Pacific or colonialism and empire more broadly. They could use their topics to both generate and answer a research question. The main focus of the workshop was on primary source analysis. Students were assigned to groups and given pre-selected primary sources to evaluate and analyze. In groups they answered a series of questions related to their sources, with a focus on format of the source, creator, audience and voices contained and/or omitted from the sources. A full class discussion followed, as each group reported back their answers.
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Short Description:
For the course's original research project, students were required to research events and people from the 1980s as told from the perspective of Trinity College. To do that, participants explored the Trinity Tripod and Ivy (Trinity's yearbook). In the workshop we discussed the nature of primary sources, the different voices that are present and absent in any source, and how that affects the story. We also looked at more general secondary sources that may inform the larger questions of the 1980s. Students also had a chance to do some individual searching for topics of their interest in the Tripod and Ivy. Lastly, the workshop provided a venue for students to see digitized version of material that was "born" in a print physical format.
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This workshop introduced students to academic secondary sources in literary criticism. The assignment prompt asked the students to discover three journal articles in JSTOR or Project MUSE. Each article would provide interpretation or analysis on a creative work of fiction that the class had read or would read. These articles would complement students' close readings of their text. Within the workshop we talked about how secondary sources in literary criticism may be discovered and used within academic research. Lastly, students saw some searching demonstrations in academic databases and had time to search for articles for their topics. In a full class workshop we could also provide a worksheet with questions for the students to analyze sources they found and then share with the class.
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